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The author revisits Medvedev’s proposal and, while some Western analysts deem the conflicting interests and value gap that separate the West from Russia to be overwhelming, others argue that the time has come to engage Russia in seeking a common security agenda in Europe. The most compelling question confronting those who favor a security partnership with Russia is: How to give Russia a voice but not a veto in a new European security system?

Colombia has experienced conflict for decades and, as the author observed, was a “paradigm for a failing state” in that it was replete with terrorism, kidnapping, murder, corruption, and general lawlessness. But today it is much safer through the imposition of the "Rule of Law."

The need for significant changes in leader development and government reform to improve the alignment, coordination, integration, and interoperability among largely autonomous U.S. Government agencies was addressed. The two conference panels were challenged to discuss leadership in a broader sense rather than focusing solely at the top, or on presidential leadership.

Terrorist attacks are media events designed to draw the attention of the press since, without a larger audience, a terrorist attack will have accomplished very little. Shaping the attitudes and perceptions of the public can undermine the public will to fight. This is done by shaping media coverage.

India’s defense establishment is undergoing an
unprecedented transformation as it seeks to (1) modernize its military, (2) obtain “strategic partnerships” with the United States and other nations, and (3) expand its influence in the Indian Ocean and beyond.

Afghanistan was America’s first attempt at conducting formalized Security Sector Reform. This case study offers readers an opportunity to learn whom the United States saw as key actors in the process, what institutions were slated for reform, and how well the United States and its partners met the typical challenges of SSR.

Education in strategy is feasible and important. Few would-be strategists are beyond improvement by some formal education. However, for such education to be well-directed, it needs to rest upon sound assumptions concerning the eternal nature yet ever shifting character, meaning, and function of strategy, and the range of behaviors required for effective strategic performance.

What is the difference between competent and talented? What is talent, and which people have it? What talents should the United States Army seek in its officers? Most importantly, what are the consequences of failing to create an officer talent management system?

As the character of conflict in the 21st century evolves, the Army’s strength will continue to rest on our values, our ethos, and our people. Our Soldiers and leaders must remain true to these values as they operate in increasingly complex environments where moral-ethical failures can have strategic implications.

The authors provide a set of principles and operational guidelines for peacekeepers to help a country restore public infrastructure and services. The extent to which public sector reconstruction takes place is a function of the mission, the level of resources, expertise of the troops, and the host country context. This guide provides courses of action to both planners and practitioners in executing these operations and supplements existing and emerging documents.

Security Force Assistance may be a new term but the activities are familiar and are related to how the Department of Defense trains, advises, and assists foreign partners' security establishments to accomplish common objectives. Recommendations to improve U.S. performance are provided.

A new and dangerous dynamic has been introduced into the Mexican internal security environment. That new dynamic is represented by a private military organization called the Zetas, and involves the migration of power from traditional state and nonstate adversaries to nontraditional nonstate private military organizations. Moreover, the actions of this irregular nonstate actor tend to be more political-psychological than military, and further move the threat from hard power to soft power solutions.

Frustration with poverty, corruption, and citizen insecurity within the political scene in Latin America is widespread as is political and ideological ferment. Given Latin America’s strategic importance to the United States, these changes and their diplomatic ramifications are of considerable interest to American policymakers.

Military commanders and diplomats in Iraq and Afghanistan have been meeting with important local officials since the inception of those conflicts. These engagements have aided commanders and diplomats alike in furthering their objectives by establishing productive relationships with those who know and understand Iraq’s complex human terrain best—the Iraqis. However, these engagements frequently take place on ad-hoc bases and are rarely incorporated into other counterinsurgency operations and strategies. In some cases, unit commanders fail to see the utility of using these engagements at all--an oversight that contributes to deteriorating security situations and loss of popular support.

Increasing numbers of Russian intellectuals became disenchanted with the West, particularly after the end of the USSR, and looked for alternative geopolitical alliances. The Muslim world, with Iran at the center, became one of the possible alternatives.

This authors argue that the idea of an operational level of war charged with the planning and conduct of campaigns misconceives the relationship between wars, campaigns, and operations, and is both historically mistaken and wrong in theory. They conclude that its incorporation into U.S. doctrine has had the regrettable impact of separating the conduct of campaigns from the conduct of wars and consequently marginalized the role of politics in the direction of war. In essence, they argue that the idea of the campaign has come to overwhelm that of strategy.

This monograph seeks to analyze military escalation and intrawar deterrence by examining two key wars where these concepts became especially relevant—the 1973 Arab-Israeli War and the 1991 Gulf War against Iraq. A central conclusion of this monograph is that intrawar deterrence is an inherently fragile concept, and that the nonuse of weapons of mass destruction in both wars was the result of a number of positive factors that may not be repeated in future conflicts.

The China Dragons of the 28th Combat Support Hospital deployed in support of Operation IRAQI FREEDOM from September 2006 until November 2007. Their service epitomizes the strides that have been made in military combat medicine.

Criminal enterprises and activities had a debilitating impact and made the attainment of U.S. objectives in Iraq much more difficult. Organized crime inhibited reconstruction and development and became a major obstacle to state-building; the insurgency was strengthened and sustained by criminal activities; sectarian conflict was funded by criminal activities and motivated by the desire to control criminal markets; and more traditional criminal enterprises created pervasive insecurity through kidnapping and extortion. Organized crime also acted as an economic and political spoiler in an oil industry expected to be the dynamo for growth and reconstruction in post Ba’athist Iraq.

The security implications of climate change, including man-made global warming, will be most pronounced in places where the effects of climate change are greatest. Two things are vitally important: stemming the tide of climate change and adapting to its far-reaching consequences.

The purpose of the Key Strategic Issues List is to provide military and civilian researchers a ready reference for issues of special interest to the Department of the Army and the Department of Defense.

The author provides a critical analysis of the South African Army’s plans for its future structures and capabilities, and offers recommendations on how the United States can help enable the future South African Army to best contribute to efforts to address conflict on the African continent.

This year’s USAWC’s Strategic Studies Institute 20th Annual Strategy Conference was held on April 14-16, 2009, at Carlisle Barracks. It focused on “Strategic Implications of Emerging Technologies,” and was intended to look beyond the noted importance of advances in the field of cyber and information technologies to raise awareness of other technology areas which thus far have received less visibility. The conference explored biogenetics, biometrics, nanotechnologies, robotics, artificial intelligence, alternative energies, electromagnetic weaponry, nuclear power, and global warming.

This guide focuses on the military’s role in rebuilding and establishing a functional, effective, and legitimate nation-state; one that can assure security and stability for its citizens, defend its borders, deliver services effectively for its populace, and is responsible and accountable to its citizens.

The question of "whether formations and units organized, trained, and equipped to destroy enemies can be adapted well enough and fast enough to dissuade or co-opt them—or, more significantly, to build the capacity of local security forces to do the dissuading and destroying"--is central to the on-going debate over whether the Army has the proper structure and training to perform full spectrum operations.

President Obama has outlined a comprehensive strategy for the war in Afghanistan which is now the central front of our campaign against Islamic terrorism. The strategy strongly connects our prosecution of that war to our policy in Pakistan and internal developments there as a necessary condition of victory. The author argues that a new approach, relying heavily on improved coordination at home and the more effective leveraging of our superior economic power in Central Asia to help stabilize the region so that it provides a secure rear to Afghanistan, is just as important.

The Triangle Institute for Security Studies (TISS), the Duke University Program in American Grand Strategy, and the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College (USAWC) conducted a colloquium on February 26-28, 2009, that examined debates over grand strategy after World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and the Cold War, and grand strategies likely to follow U.S. involvement in Iraq.

The author addresses the subject of the multifaceted nature and predominant role of gangs operating as state and nonstate proxies in the modern unbalanced global security environment. In every phase of the process of compelling radical political change, agitator-gangs and popular militias play significant roles in helping their political patrons prepare to take control of a targeted political-social entity. As a result, gangs (bandas criminales or whatever they may be called) are important components of a highly complex political-psychological-military act—contemporary irregular asymmetrical political war.

The concepts and framework provided herein have formed the foundation for how the U.S. Army War College has incorporated culture in the study of strategy and policy, including its new approach to regional studies.

The alarming rise in drug-related violence in Mexico is discussed and the prospects of U.S. counterdrug policies in that country is assessed. The author argues that current U.S. policies are ill-suited for confronting the Mexican drug trade, and advocates a more holistic, better integrated approach to counternarcotics.

On September 26, 2008, over 70 leading experts from academia, government, the military and policy thinktanks assembled at Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania, to look beyond the Chinese People's Liberation Army's (PLA) primary focus on Taiwan and to the evolving new roles of the PLA. The conference could not have been timelier, given the PLA’s active involvement in events during 2008, including earthquake relief, counterterrorism, humanitarian assistance, space activities, and blue water naval operations.

The issue of burden-sharing in NATO is as relevant today as it was when the alliance was originally founded in 1949. This monograph examines how well new NATO members are contributing to the alliance. Lessons learned apply directly to current burden-sharing debates and provide insights into future burden-sharing opportunities and challenges.

As the Army explores how to incorporate anthropological and sociological researchers into reconstruction efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, the author discusses how General Douglas MacArthur and his staff fused together the work of military socio-cultural intelligence analysts with civilian academic sociologists to rebuild Japan. To understand what mattered most to the Japanese as Americans entered a then-presumably precarious situation (this was not Germany with its western mindset and traditions), intelligence analysts’ role was seminal during the early, demilitarization phase of rebuilding Japan. Sociologists, working closely with Japanese nationals, contributed significantly to the democratization phase. This was perhaps the first time in American history that sociological research supplemented traditional intelligence analysis in informing occupational leaders.

The Department of Defense experienced revolutionary change in its strategic outlook over the past 8 years. As it transitions to new leadership in the White House and undertakes
a historic Quadrennial Defense Review, it will be important for to examine the “first principles.”
that guide its force planning.

Provincial reconstruction teams (PRTs, along with civilian development agencies, including the U.S. Agency for International Development, numerous nongovernmental organizations, and the Afghan government’s National Solidarity Program, are one of several organizations working on reconstruction in Afghanistan. Perhaps unsurprisingly, something of a debate has emerged over whether PRTs are needed.

As of September 2008, the Bush administration was contemplating not just a break in arms talks but actual sanctions, and allowed the bilateral civil nuclear treaty with Russia to die in the Senate rather than go forward for confirmation. Russian spokesmen make clear their belief that American concessions on key elements of arms control issues like missile defenses in Europe are a touchstone for the relationship and a condition of any further progress towards genuine dialogue.

The prospects for U.S.-Russian security cooperation lay buried under the wheels of Russia’s invasion of Georgia in August 2008. But ultimately, given Russia's power, standing, and nuclear capability, dialogue and cooperation will be resumed at some point in the future. Therefore, an analysis of the prospects for and conditions favoring such cooperation is an urgent and important task that cries out for clarification precisely because current U.S.-Russian relations are so difficult.

An overview of changing U.S. Central Asia policy over the past 5 years reveals an effort to respond to changing developments on the ground, most recently the Georgian crisis, but also the “color” revolutions, the Andijan events in Uzbekistan and its subsequent decision to end U.S. basing rights at Karshi Khanabad, Kazakhstan’s economic rise, and leadership change in Turkmenistan. At the same time, the worsening security situation in Afghanistan and growing insecurity about energy supplies has heightened U.S. interest in security and economic cooperation in Central Asia.

United States defense assistance programs have had mixed results in the promotion of defense reform in Kazakhstan, partly as a result of internal factors ranging from corruption to inadequate resource management and geopolitical limitations placed on how far Astana can cooperate with either the Unied States or NATO taking account of its close political relations with both Russia and China. New, deeper and more closely monitored programs are needed, and, combined with multilateral cooperative initiatives, should be a matter of urgent priority, otherwise, such programs will underperform and languish in the repetition of the misjudgements of the past.

Japan’s decision to attack the United States in 1941 is widely regarded as irrational to the point of suicidal. How could Japan hope to survive a war with, much less defeat, an enemy possessing an invulnerable homeland and an industrial base 10 times that of Japan? The Pacific War was a war that Japan was always going to lose, so how does one explain Tokyo’s decision for war? Did the Japanese recognize the odds against them? Did they have a concept of victory, or at least of avoiding defeat? Or did the Japanese prefer a lost war to an unacceptable peace?

The current Building Partner Capacity and Stability Operations capabilities and capacities within the Army and how they relate and complement the efforts of the CRC are examined. As the General Purpose Force looks forward to expanding roles in Irregular Warfare, Foreign Internal Defense, Security Assistance and Stability Operations, does the U.S. Army or the Department of Defense have the proper force structure and minimal capability to fight and win through all phases of conflict?

Pioneers of nuclear-age policy analysis, Albert Wohlstetter (1913-1997) and Roberta Wohlstetter (1912-2007) emerged as two of America's most consequential, innovative and controversial strategists. Through the clarity of their thinking, the rigor of their research, and the persistence of their personalities, they were able to shape the views and aid the decisions of Democratic and Republican policy makers both during and after the Cold War. Although the Wohlstetters' strategic concepts and analytical methods continue to be highly influential, no book has brought together their most important published and unpublished essays--until now.

This paper recommends new approaches to fighting terrorism. The author explores al-Qa’ida’s organization, leaders, doctrine, and their radical ideologies. Several initiatives are recommended to include development of a cogent grand national strategy. These recommendations are intended to assist future planners in the development of a grand national strategy and an integrated long war campaign plan aimed at terrorism.

A sustainable national security strategy is feasible only when directed by a sustainable national security policy. In the absence of policy guidance, strategy will be meaningless. The only policy that meets both the mandates of American culture and the challenges of the outside world is one that seeks to lead the necessary mission of guarding and advancing world order.

Regional spillover problems associated with the Iraq war need to be considered and addressed even in the event of strong future success in building the new Iraq. In less optimistic scenarios, these issues will become even more important.